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SmashManiac wrote:
I don't see the difference between doing that and using the reverse bottle adventure glitch in Ocarina of Time to pick up sage medallions out of thin air.
The difference is fairly obvious. In oot, you don't beat the game until you do the exact same thing you would normally do: beat the final boss. Most of the game before that is skipped, but in the end, you still need to beat the boss.
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Sir VG wrote:
One thing I noticed in the downloadable encode is at about 0:35. Is it possible to jump onto the left branch (the one with the sparkle), and use that to jump to the upper right branch and then up, rather then hitting the wall? This is where I mean.
Yes, but i need to waste a number of frames anyway to manipulate the rng for the next screen (if i enter the next screen as fast as possible, i just end up with an unavoidable battle). Also, i'd now have to redo the entire act to change it.
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Derakon wrote:
When in doubt, use the frame counter. It won't lie to you. I'm not at all familiar with the game* but it's entirely possible that the in-game timer is inaccurate for all sorts of reasons. Lag is the obvious possible explanation, but it may also purposefully run the timer inaccurately during special techniques or the like.
Kinda lame that the game makes bosses take longer if you're really good at killing them. I wonder if this might be a situation in which the most entertaining option isn't the fastest? That is to say, going all-out and inflicting as much damage as possible even if that causes the boss to grow extra limbs and organs for you to lop off, instead of sitting around wasting time so he won't. Again, not familiar with the game, and this is a judgement call at the best of times. Go with whatever you think is best.
* Though, having seen it for $10 on Amazon, I went ahead and ordered it after seeing your encode; it has a good pedigree.
Yeah, i will be now. I just assumed it was accurate and was using it for a basic comparison. I can't really imagine why it was off by so much. I didn't use any special attacks, except at the beginning, which was exactly the same in both attempts, and lag isn't really much of an issue in this game except in certain places. But whatever, it doesn't really matter.
New encode
Link to video
Changes from the last video start at 3:20. At 3:25 you can see where i had to wait. I lose ~3 seconds there and another 3 seconds at 4:18, and it looks silly, but in the grand scheme of things, it's still only 6 seconds, which despite looking like poor gameplay, is still better than spending ~17 seconds dealing damage that doesn't need to be dealt.
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Derakon wrote:
Could be the game has some form of dynamic difficulty? If it sees that you're really good then it makes the game harder.
Or it could be random. But the easiest way to test would probably be to make the fight slower by increments and see if there's some cutoff where it consistently doesn't add the extra health bar.
Yeah, i have no idea. I didn't even notice it until i finished the boss, and saw my time. About to start testing it now.
edit: It's not random :(
If i finish off the first hp bar before frame ~12650 it takes half as much off the second hp bar vs if i finish it after that frame. I'm going to need to stand around for 2 seconds there -.-""
Best possible time for the first boss should be something like 1:14 +/- 2 seconds i think.
edit2: just managed 1:19 for the boss. With massive amounts of brute forced luck manipulation, i could likely get a few more seconds off, but i don't really see more than a second of improvement happening any other way. Frankly though, i'm not really willing to do it for a 2-4 second improvement on a 1:15+ run, so i think i'm just going to stick with what i've got now. I'll post a new encode later.
edit3: Apparently the battle timer in game is bullshit. My latest attempt says 1:19 (first was 1:21), and is 6 seconds faster. Guess that isn't at all useful for comparison.
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Ugh, wtf is this. Refought boss one, and after 4 hp bars, i was ahead of my previous time by 9.5 seconds.
Then he got an extra hp bar, which cost me 17 seconds.
It wasn't based on anything before the fight, as i started rerecording 5 or 10 seconds into the fight. Hopefully it's entirely random, so i can manipulate it, and not based on how fast i damage him.
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Bosses all have a lot of hp, i don't think the difficulty changes that. It's definitely the same on shura anyway, i've never actually played on muso. I should easily get a 700+ combo on one of the later bosses.
Dolphin actually spit out a 15 gb file. I probably should have compressed it more/better, but it's not something i've really done before, so i wasn't too sure how to do so without destroying the quality.
Also, the .dtm: http://www.mediafire.com/?hg8vpi7uj4w2mvg
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Took longer than expected because when i played back the end of my movie from the start, it ended up desyncing 50k frames before the end, so had to redo most of the final act. dtms for my shura run can be found here. I'll probably have act 1 finished and encoded by morning.
Damage:
All done against first boss, Quick draw was with a 13 damage weapon, normal attacks with a 12 damage weapon. Moonlight damage may be wrong, since it hits like 7 times, and numbers overlap, and is sometimes impossible to see, etc which is why i only tried it 3 times, but it shouldn't really change the overall conclusion. Arts can be used during the animation for a QD, which is why they are separated.
Switching over 2 weapons requires 10 more frames than switching to the next on, which will always happen every other time i switch weapons during a boss, since i'll never have more than 2 useful weapons at once.
Conclusions are pretty obvious for the 3 starter weapons: only use arts right after QD, which should always be used as soon as it is available, otherwise just spam normal attacks.
I have not tested the odachi yet, but i'm fairly sure it's completely useless against single enemies, i'll update if i find otherwise.
Ariel attacks don't require testing, as it's incredibly obvious that it is always best to combo attacks, but never finish a combo in the air except right before hitting the ground (since the final attack brings you to the ground, and all but the last hit of it do extremely low damage). The final attack can be interrupted with arts, or that moving attack thingy.
Manipulating damage is possible, but since the only method i have of doing so is via brute force, and it wouldn't save more than a few seconds per boss, i'm not sure how much i really care to do so. Also, in 30 combos, i never once saw a 7-7-7-11 damage round, so fuck trying to manipulate that repeatedly.
edit: downward swipes take 60 frames, and average 16.7 damage each (15-18 range), so with about the same damage, but 5 frames faster, they are better than 3 hit combos if i'm unable to finish it for whatever reason, or especially to use them to finish a boss off, since they do the entire damage after ~25 frames, which i believe makes it the fastest finisher i have.
edit2: 14 damage odachi gets ~47 damage per 200 frames, so it is indeed worthless.
edit3: I'm really enjoying TASing, but it kills me how much effort goes in for such tiny improvements. Just finished the first boss, and got a time of 1:30, fighting it nearly perfectly. I doubt it could possibly be improved by more than a second. Meanwhile, my test run which looking back on it, was fairly terrible killed it in 1:34, and using almost no save states i beat it on shura in 1:35. I just spent nearly two hours to save 4 seconds on a fight that requires little more than mashing A. And now i get to redo the last 30 seconds that desynced too.
Oh well, it's fun anyway. Encode of act 1 should be uploaded within an hour or so.
more edits: and now i have to redo the entire first boss. Following up a 4 hit combo with an uppercut, flying dash attack, and then A spam until i hit the ground is about 33% faster than just mashing A, because you can start the uppercut as soon as the fourth swing hits, without waiting at all. This takes ~220-230 frames per cycle, and does ~95 damage.
even more edits: uploading in glorious 720p to http://youtu.be/YufGFanxBfs now. I'll upload to nico and megaupload after, and edit yet again when it's done.
Link to videohttp://www.megaupload.com/?d=H6HN1GN7
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although I will still be paranoid about desyncs so I will play the entire dtm from beginning at times. It currently takes my laptop 45 minutes to get to Del Lago, and that's only 12 minutes of gameplay.
Fwiw, i just finished my initial playthrough of muramasa last night, and through almost 400k frames, i got one desync that did not occur while playing back initially with read only. So while i do recommend playing it back from the start every so often, i wouldn't worry about doing it too often.
Also, you CAN play it back with dual core and idle skipping enabled, however it is (obviously) prone to random desyncs, so you can't just walk away while it plays back, you will need to watch it and constantly save state+reload when it desyncs.
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Just finished through shura with a time of 1:43. Proper routing should knock off 10-15 minutes, and i'd expect better optimization to take off a additional 15 minutes or so. 1:15 seems like a safe bet. sub-1 hour may be possible, but i doubt it.
Act 1 is really short and easy, so it should be done tomorrow or the day after, depending on how much time i have between family activities. I'll upload it to youtube as i finish each act.
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diggidoyo wrote:
Alright, I've compiled the emulator in a zip that should correctly sync this without a problem.
This is the latest stable release (Dolphin v3.0, 64bit) configured exactly as mine.
All you need the submission input file, the DLC .wad, and the actual game.
Change the ISO directory (Config->Paths) to point to those, install the .wad (by double clicking it in Dolphin), then highlight MM10 and play this recording!
Fyi, that contains copyrighted files (the dsp dumps).
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Frame advance actually advances by VIs, not frames. So if there is only one VI every other frame, it will indeed skip a frame.
And for mario sunshine/luigi's mansion, what value was at 0xb?
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nitsuja wrote:
rog wrote:
nitsuja wrote:
Try going to Options > Hotkey Settings and setting a hotkey for "Read-only mode". Then you can press it when the game window is active to toggle read-only. That should always work even when emulation is paused.
It doesn't.
But the hotkey works when emulation isn't paused? Does the window title change when you press it or not?
Yes, the hotkey works fine when unpaused. And the title doesn't change ever?
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nitsuja wrote:
rog wrote:
Can't turn on read only while a game is paused, in 291 =x
Try going to Options > Hotkey Settings and setting a hotkey for "Read-only mode". Then you can press it when the game window is active to toggle read-only. That should always work even when emulation is paused.
All done against first boss, Quick draw was with a 13 damage weapon, normal attacks with a 12 damage weapon. Moonlight damage may be wrong, since it hits like 7 times, and numbers overlap, and is sometimes impossible to see, etc which is why i only tried it 3 times, but it shouldn't really change the overall conclusion. Arts can be used during the animation for a QD, which is why they are separated.
Switching over 2 weapons requires 10 more frames than switching to the next on, which will always happen every other time i switch weapons during a boss, since i'll never have more than 2 useful weapons at once.
Conclusions are pretty obvious for the 3 starter weapons: only use arts right after QD, which should always be used as soon as it is available, otherwise just spam normal attacks.
I have not tested the odachi yet, but i'm fairly sure it's completely useless against single enemies, i'll update if i find otherwise.
Ariel attacks don't require testing, as it's incredibly obvious that it is always best to combo attacks, but never finish a combo in the air except right before hitting the ground (since the final attack brings you to the ground, and all but the last hit of it do extremely low damage). The final attack can be interrupted with arts, or that moving attack thingy.
Manipulating damage is possible, but since the only method i have of doing so is via brute force, and it wouldn't save more than a few seconds per boss, i'm not sure how much i really care to do so. Also, in 30 combos, i never once saw a 7-7-7-11 damage round, so fuck trying to manipulate that repeatedly.
edit: downward swipes take 60 frames, and average 16.7 damage each (15-18 range), so with about the same damage, but 5 frames faster, they are better than 3 hit combos if i'm unable to finish it for whatever reason, or especially to use them to finish a boss off, since they do the entire damage after ~25 frames, which i believe makes it the fastest finisher i have.
edit2: 14 damage odachi gets ~47 damage per 200 frames, so it is indeed worthless.
edit3: I'm really enjoying TASing, but it kills me how much effort goes in for such tiny improvements. Just finished the first boss, and got a time of 1:30, fighting it nearly perfectly. I doubt it could possibly be improved by more than a second. Meanwhile, my test run which looking back on it, was fairly terrible killed it in 1:34, and using almost no save states i beat it on shura in 1:35. I just spent nearly two hours to save 4 seconds on a fight that requires little more than mashing A. And now i get to redo the last 30 seconds that desynced too.
Oh well, it's fun anyway. Encode of act 1 should be uploaded within an hour or so.
more edits: and now i have to redo the entire first boss. Following up a 4 hit combo with an uppercut, flying dash attack, and then A spam until i hit the ground is about 33% faster than just mashing A, because you can start the uppercut as soon as the fourth swing hits, without waiting at all. This takes ~220-230 frames per cycle, and does ~95 damage.
even more edits: uploading in glorious 720p to http://youtu.be/YufGFanxBfs now. I'll upload to nico and megaupload after, and edit yet again when it's done.
Link to video
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=H6HN1GN7